CAMBRIDGE, Maine — Ben Willard gazes at a photo more than a half century old, smiles, and shakes his head.
“She was gorgeous,” he says, softly, describing the picture that accompanies the newspaper wedding announcement of Dorothea Pratt. “Just gorgeous.”
Nearby, the girl in the photo — now Dottie Willard, as she has been for the past 58 years — beams proudly.
Dottie is proud of their relationship. “It’s unreal [to remain together this long], in this day and age,” she says.
Dottie is also proud of her two sons. And she’s especially proud of the man she married.
Over the course of two hours, she flits from the living room to the kitchen to a bedroom, gathering an assortment of photos that document a life spent in service to the nation.
The snapshots show Ben preparing to head overseas during World War II, the ships he served on in Korea and Vietnam and the people he knew while stationed in Panama and at far-flung U.S. Naval installations around the globe.
Dottie knows Ben’s story as well as the three-war veteran does, it seems. And sometimes, she’s willing to tell tales that her husband might rather have omitted.
“He isn’t really 90 [years old],” Dottie whispers, sharing a family secret more than seven decades in the making. “He’s really 87.”
Ben laughs, admitting that he might have pulled a fast one on Uncle Sam back when he was a tall, rugged boy eager to do whatever he could to help a country at war.
“[My mother] said I was 17,” Ben says. “But I wasn’t.”
Instead, Benjamin Franklin Willard was just 15 (or 14, or 16 — the number changes as Ben tells the story) when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1942.
“[My mother] didn’t want me to go in,” Ben says. “She said I was too young. But she said, ‘You’re going to go anyway. You’ll find a way to get in.’ Which I would have.”
The next day, Ben hitchhiked to Spartanburg, S.C., in his home state, and began a 30-year Navy career that included three major wars. He was also on duty on a ship during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Eventually, he met Dottie, and they married in 1957.
But he almost didn’t live long enough for the love story to blossom.
World at war
When Ben emerged from boot camp, he found himself in a hangar with 50,000 others, awaiting their deployment overseas. He ended up in Jacksonville, Fla., and was assigned to a submarine chaser, SC-696.
But when SC-696 shipped out, bound for Europe, Ben wasn’t allowed to go.
Ben says his brother was already in combat, and after five brothers were killed during the sinking of a single ship in 1942, the military had become more strict about sending siblings into combat situations at the same time.
“They put this guy named Butler in my place [on SC-696]. He was a seaman first class,” Ben says. “He’s dead now. If I’d been on it, I’d be dead.”
SC-696 was sunk by a German dive-bomber off Sicily in August of 1943. All hands were lost.
Ben says he was unsure how World War II would turn out, and said that even when he was stationed stateside, the danger was evident.
“We almost lost that war. I was scared to death,” he says. “I was in Jacksonville in ‘42. You could see the German subs right at the breakwater … when they spotted a sub, we’d go out after ‘em.”
By the end of the war, Ben — at times a Navy cook, at other times a military police officer — found himself in California. And when American GIs returned to the states, he was among the people who escorted them home.
“We made 30 round trips [on trains], taking guys home,” he says. “We had a layover in Kansas City … Before we left, there were over 5,000 girls there, and we had a time keeping those guys on the train.”
He says the scene was chaotic, and the GIs were eager to step off the train and spend time with their welcoming committee.
“We did a lot of running around,” he says. “They wanted to get off that train so bad. Girls were hollering at ‘em. The girls were starved for affection, you know? Most of the guys were overseas during the war.”
Ben says the Korean conflict was the most unpleasant for him, largely because the weather was so cold. Later, he ended up in Vietnam long before most Americans had ever heard of the nation.
But before he headed to Vietnam, he had a little bit of business to take care of back in Maine.
Romance blooms
In the mid-1950s, Ben spent some time working in New England. One spur-of-the-moment road trip ended up changing his life, he and his wife say.
“He was stationed in Rhode Island at the time, and a friend from Dover invited him to Maine to go fishing,” Dottie said. “He caught a real, live fish.”
Dottie was a high school student in Dover-Foxcroft at the time, and she captured the Navy man’s attention despite an 11-year age difference.
“I didn’t go fishing,” he says, a gleam in his eye. “She kept me busy.”
Dottie remembers things a bit differently.
“It took him a long time to catch me,” she says.
Eventually, though, he did, and they started dating after she graduated from high school. Even then, Dottie says she was a bit shy around her future husband.
“I’ve got to tell you about the first kiss he gave me,” she says. “I was in [my parents’ room] combing my hair and I seen him coming up behind me.”
Dottie says she knew what Ben had in mind … and she had other ideas.
“So I shoved my mouth full of bobby pins,” she says. “I figured he wouldn’t kiss me if I had a mouthful of bobby pins. That dumb guy, he did it anyway.”
After an 18-month courtship, the couple was married in 1957. Shortly after that, Ben shipped out for Vietnam, a small country in southeast Asia.
“It was supposed to be a secret operation. We were the first ones to go, in 1958,” he says. “[But the Vietnamese] knew who we were. Good god! Who else had a fleet?”
In 1962, Ben decided to end his 20-year Navy Career, though he remained in the reserves, both active and inactive, for another decade.
The reason for his ‘62 retirement: His family needed him.
“My son [also named Ben] was just a year old and I didn’t want her to be left with a child while I was gone,” he says. “So I got out.”
In 1968, Ben worked as a chef on Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s campaign staff — “[He ate] anything, everything,” — and he has put his Navy cooking experience to use as an executive chef at a hospital and restaurants. After moving to Maine in 1969 and staying in Dover-Foxcroft with Dottie’s father for a short time, the couple settled in rural Cambridge where they’ve lived for the past 45 years.
Ben says he was hooked on the state the first time he visited.
“I loved it. I couldn’t believe how everything was so fresh and green,” he says. “The water was clear. Down south, the water was muddy and it always dried up in the summertime. Up here it was nice and fresh.”
In the late 1970s, Ben went back to school, taking night classes so that he could complete a formal education he’d cut short as a 10th grader back in 1942. He graduated from Piscataquis Community high school in 1980. Among that year’s other graduates: Dottie and Ben’s older son Ben.
Today, their living room walls are covered with photos that document their life together. The couple takes turns pointing at the pictures, explaining where they were taken, and why they matter.
Navy life is well represented on those walls. So is their wedding. And their two sons.
“We’ve had a good life,” Ben says. Dottie nods in agreement. “A good life.”
